The Last Two Left Alive
by eclecticfandomer
Summary: Zuko and Katara are the last of the gAang still alive. They mull over their lives up to that point. ONESHOT.


A/N:

So I am going to be graduating High School in about 6 months. While i'm ready for this new step in my life, college, I can't help but feel nostalgic. Since im a self hating dumbass I decided to look up AtLA quotes… Now the feels are hitting me so hard it hurts. This is both my punishment and my medicine. Fair warning: I've never watched or read any of LOK. I have however watched and read all of AtLA. So without further ado.

* * *

_Leaves from the vine, falling so slow_

_Like fragile, tiny shells, drifting in the foam,_

_Little Soldier boy, come marching home_

_Brave Soldier boy, come marching home_

_~Uncle Iroh~_

* * *

They were the last two left. Sokka had passed years ago, leaving the South in the capable hands of his Heir. With the help of the North, the South prospered. The balance of the world, upset for a hundred year, was corrected by a funny kid with arrow tattoos. Someone who preferred to make people laugh with a marble trick, than to ever take up a stance against them. The world mourned the loss of the Avatar. Many, Katara included, believed he would grow to Kyoshi's age, or atleast to one hundred. Avatars always lived longer, they said. There's no worry, they said. But no one could have predicted the Avatar, Bridge between worlds to die in his sleep, a meer 66 year old. The first words he said to her were also the last.

"_I need to ask you something…" Aang said playfully. He was lying on the bed, wearing only his toga bottoms. Even though he was 66, Katara still found him amazing, in every way imaginable. She sat down on the bed. Distantly she could hear other Airbenders and Air Acolytes on the island. It was something they fought over often. "Please… Come closer." Katara did as he had asked. Moving to lie down next to him, face to face, she waited for him to continue. "Will you go penguin sledding with me?" The joy of youth had never left. The light in his eyes would never go out. It was what people were assuring her of, it was what she believed as well._

"_Of course. We have to go see Sokka and his kid for the coronation. When we get to the South Pole, well go penguin sledding."_

They never went penguin sledding.

Aang had died in his sleep, lying next to her. The joyous monk knew it was his time to go. Instead of making others worry, or praying to delay the inevitable, he left. A perfect mirror image. A note to tell Gyatso he was leaving the Southern Air Temple, and a note to tell Katara he wouldn't be there to wake up next to her the next morning. Silent like an Airbender he left. But the storm of the world was what followed.

They let his ashes go in the Southern Air Temple. Everyone was there. Zuko had put the Fire Nation on hold to burn Aang's pyre. A great and terrible honor, they called it. He was just glad that his friend had lived a happy life.

Sokka moved the coronation back, wanting to be with his sister was enough. Sokka also visited Momos grave when he could, leaving lychee nuts for the little lemur.

Toph didn't feel him. Not his heartbeat, or the way that he would just lightly float above the ground. Twinkletoes was gone to the great beyond. She remembered, just them, how much she had missed the feather steps of her pupil.

Katara was surrounded by the people she loved and the people that loved her back. Survival was in her blood.

* * *

Sokka was the next to go. Much much later, but still before Katara thought he was ready. They had been through everything together as siblings. She wasn't sure if she would ever be ready. But that was how it went. Time marched on and all you could remember was figments of the past, never to be experienced again.

She would miss the way he went on and on about meat. It seemed like a small thing at the time, close joke among friends. However she still found herself making dishes, and half hearing Sokka wanting more meat on his, only to turn and find the fragmented shadows of the past.

* * *

Toph went next. True to her word she was pulled from the land of the living kicking and screaming. The long since retired Police Chief tried to stop a group of robbers. Kids who accidentally hit her just a little too hard. Boulders bruise aged skin easily. Heart complications killed her before either Zuko or Katara could make it to her bedside.

She died blind, without a hand to hold. The nurses were never sure about her last words. Most say they were true to her: Im the Blind Bandit Bitch. Others saw she passed without a word, a broken husk of her former glory. One orderly told Katara that in her final moments, he heard her say that she could see them, her friends. He also said that she told them, Zuko and Katara, that it was ok. She was strong, and that they would meet her on the other side soon enough.

* * *

Twenty years later and it was just them. Just Zuko and Katara. Blood enemies turned friends.

"Do you ever wonder," He began, the wrinkles on his forehead stood out in the pale candlelight, "why us?"

"No." Her fingers, gnarled and stiff, could no longer Waterbend. "We were a motley crew of children chasing after the fantasy of completion. Bound by fate to find one another. To live, to die, all besides each other."

"Chasing approval, chasing love, chasing ghosts; we were bound to stumble across the fated lines that connected us."

"Do you ever wonder whether or not you would change something in the past; and what would you change?"

"Nothing. Paths would diverge, then where would we be? Perhaps this is what they mean when they say that everything happens for a reason."

"If only we could have both."

"Do you ever miss the days of our youth? Where we could bend for hours and feel whole. When we were chasing the horizon on Appa, children thrust into the cruel hands of war."

"I remember them well. I cope with the nightmares and daydreams as well as can be expected. I miss those times with my soul. Where nothing was perfect, or even ok, but we were together, and that made it bearable."

"Have you seen the next Avatar? Korra is her name, correct?"

"Yes. I was there when she was given the toys. But I knew, she had the same spark he did. I saw pieces of him in her. Toph even claimed that Korra _felt_ like him. When she first met Korra, she called her Twinkletoes. I saw Korra, me and Tenzin had to find Aang's reincarnation. A death so fresh it is branded into the heart and minds of those who survived the hundred years war. And his closest family members had to find his replacement. I taught her the basics of Waterbending."

"She was never Aang, but his spirit resided within her. She told me something funny the first time I witnessed her go into the Avatar state. She said not to worry, that the adventures we shared in this world would live on to the next."

"I'm tired of waiting. Tired of everything feeling so tight, like the hands of time have come to permanent roost, binding my soul and heart."

"As old as we are it cannot be much longer."

And it wasn't.

* * *

A/N:

Ugh the feels. I digress. I needed a good cry so here you go. Life is stressful enough already.


End file.
